Karen Pryor

I'd say A) Your statements are reactionary, B) "you beat him until you were ripping hide off" < These are the statements only a +R extremist would make, C) There is nothing "scientific" or productive about projecting our emotional baggage upon our dogs,

 
And your statements are directed soley at me. When you stated that that +R trainers will help a person justifiy euthanasia for a problem dog, I did not label you as reactionary, though I felt the statement was inaccurate. Instead, I started the Dunbar thread to give a clarifying bit of information regarding that notion. I'm still a scientific person, even if my post wasn't well received. Nor did I intend this thread to be a clash of personalities, though it seems unavoidable, lately. 

Ignoring all the snarky bits...

Have any of ya'll read "Lads Before the Wind"? It's Karen Pryor's account of the work she did at Sea Life Park (Hou, the dolphin mentioned in that study, is mentioned in there quite a bit.) and it's really interesitng not just from a clicker training POV but to hear all the stories about the interesting people she worked with and met through that, from Konrad Lorenz to BF Skinner to a whole bunch of others.

There's mention of someone (I can't remember who and I returned the book, I don't have my own copy) training a guppy to jump through hoops using OC! That's impressive.

Currently, I'm trying to find a reward that works reliably for mice. I've clicker trained rats before but never mice.

I would rather not have to start editing this thread.  Keep it on topic and keep it friendly or we will talk.

Pwca, YES! I love "Lads Before the Wind"! In fact it was reading about this study there that prompted me to post the link to the actual original paper for ron to look at.

The chapter in that book concerning this study is inspirational. The paper itself of course is ver scientific and dispassionate, but reading Pryor's personal thoughts about it made me think very very deeply about what we expect out of our companion animals and how we so much of the time train them so they're "good enough for our needs" but we never ask them how far they want to take their own intellectual development. It made me see training in an entirely new way, beyond just the safety and security of my dogs in the world, and towards allowing them to stretch their intellects and creativity simply for their own sakes.

PWCA -

Try switching your training to about 1:00 am. Even if your mice seem active during the day, they are much more receptive to training at night. I did some experiments in high school - my only warm blooded pet as a kid was a white mouse.

My mom is probably bitterly regretting the decision not to allow me pets as a kid as I probably would have been happy as a "normal" pet owner, once that rule didn't apply, if I had had dogs like my friends growing up. Now I live a couple hours from her so we can have room for the ten dogs, sheep, etc. []

Have any of ya'll read "Lads Before the Wind"?

Sounds great. Thanks for the recommendation. I just ordered a used copy of the first edition for .01 (plus shipping) on Amazon
 
 
Edited for atrocious grammar.

To me it seems that rewarding the novel behaviors via clicker optimizes overall intelligence in mammals and encourages them to use their minds on a regular basis.

 
I think so, too.
 

Just offering my thoughts, not "aiming" this at anyone []:

Offering dogs an opportunity to achieve a higher intellectual fulfillment ....

I like scifi books that have dolphins negotiating with humans to be included in space travels. I like imagining a world in which the intellectual development of other species informs our global society into some kind of harmonious global culture ... But, thinking of humans as a kind of "god" species that "brings up the rest" is a little ewey, and colonialist.

Offering dogs an opportunity to achieve a higher intellectual fulfillment .... question of ethics, is that for our benefit or theirs? Human interaction with animals (or objects in the environment) always serves the human most, this is human nature, IMHO. Even with a benevolent desire to "raise up" others, teh colonizer sets the agenda.

We've learned the lessons of colonization for millennia. Non-western cultures have been corralled into western developmental themes and timelines, and have not been left to develop and flourish in a pattern of their own making. What would an African Modernism look like, if left to it's own devices? There's bit of a South American one that looks pretty interesting.

Yeah ... that squicks me out a little bit.

Not suggesting that people who clicker train animals are akin to the Dutch in South Africa, or the British in ... well, most everywhere, lol ... just saying that projecting our western, human values onto the development of other cultures and species maybe isn't as benign as we might assume.

That said, projecting intellectal fullfillment seeking, as a concept, isn't any more or less amthropomorphizing than any other motivations we might project onto dogs, like instinct, wanting to fit in with it's pack, hedonism, etc. ....

Offering dogs an opportunity to achieve a higher intellectual fulfillment .... question of ethics, is that for our benefit or theirs? Human interaction with animals (or objects in the environment) always serves the human most, this is human nature, IMHO. Even with a benevolent desire to "raise up" others, teh colonizer sets the agenda

 
By domesticating the dog they've already been "colonized" if you choose to use that analogy. The alternative is that having domesticated pets is unacceptable in principle. I personally am not a supporter of PETA.
 
I see it differently. Because our dogs live regulated lives where they aren't usually allowed to use their brains to explore, kill, or do other natural doggie behaviors, it makes sense to utilize both their brains and their bodies in ways that are pleasurable and stimulating for them. The opposite would be leaving a dog kenneled all day with no interaction except giving food and water. They lose their marbles quickly.
 
Hence dogs that will never live on a farm are taught herding, dogs take agility classes, or any number of other things. Things that are good for their minds and bodies. Would you consider hiding treats and teaching them to find things to be "colonization"?
 
Is showing the dog that it's a good thing to try new behaviors for the benefit of the human or the dog? Both. Dogs get a form of canine Alzheimers which can shorten their lives. I consider a shortened life to be bad both from the human and canine perspective.
 
Even more frequently, dogs that fail to learn are euthanized, which is particularly bad for the dog. I doubt if canine and human brains are so different that humans learn better when rewarded for good behavior and enjoy learning, but canines prefer to learn via coercion. So yes, I think encouraging a dog to use thier mind is a good and natural thing. Animals in the wild are forced to use theirs for survival.

Offering dogs an opportunity to achieve a higher intellectual fulfillment

 
That is a good point. Is the above statement anthropromorphization? Or simply a fact that is expressed in human terms? I like to think the latter.
 
But if you're going to engage in semantics, it must have a logical order to mean anything. Recently, we clicker trainers were accused of not letting our dog "think" by commanding incompatible behaviors to the behaviors we don't want. Now, we're letting them think too much or reach a thinking fulfillment? It has to be one or the other, it seems to me.
 

I prefer "different" to "higher" and "enrichment" to "expansion."

And the road goes both ways if you go into it with the right attitude. I believe it's one of our greatest privileges that we do have the ability to seek out and facilitate interactions with those "other" than ourselves, voluntarily, and encourage them in return. Our own intellects get stunted if we don't - whether you are talking about exploring outside your species or outside your human social circle.

Clicker training is a really really cool tool to further that end, but it's not the only one - people and animals have been communicating on this wavelength since the first time a human noticed an animal would "work" for a reward.